“Miss Rivera.” The voice was cultured, older, carrying the faint trace of an accent I couldn’t place. “I understand you’ve been asking questions about Richard Hartley’s financial arrangements.”
My hand tightened on my phone. “Who is this?”
“A concerned party. One who wants to see the truth come out — but not at the cost of innocent lives.”
Victor Corsetti. It had to be.
“If you’re threatening me?—”
“I don’t make threats, Miss Rivera. I make offers.” A pause weighted with the particular patience of a man who had been waiting a long time for this conversation. “You have information that could damage Sebastian Laurent’s empire. I have information that could destroy it entirely. Perhaps we could find an arrangement that benefits us both.”
“I’m not interested in arrangements.”
“Everyone is interested in arrangements. It’s simply a matter of finding the right terms.” His voice dropped, became almost paternal. “You’re a talented journalist. Ambitious. Independent. I respect that. But you’ve chosen to align yourself with a man who will eventually disappoint you — as he’s disappointed everyone who’s ever gotten close to him.”
“You don’t know anything about our relationship.”
“I know he’s kept secrets from you. I know he’s tried to control the narrative of his own investigation rather than trusting you with the truth. I know that right now, despite everything he told you last night, you’re still wondering whether you can believe it.”
The words hit closer than I wanted to admit. Victor was good — he’d identified exactly the crack in the foundation and was pressing on it with surgical precision.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“I want you to consider an alternative perspective. Sebastian Laurent presents himself as a protector — a man who shields the weak and punishes the corrupt. But protection and control are two sides of the same coin, aren’t they? He protects people by controlling them. And eventually, that control becomes a cage.”
I thought about the security detail Sebastian had arranged for my apartment. The calls he’d made last night while I went home alone. The way he’d said let me do what I know how to do like it was the only language he had.
“You’re trying to manipulate me,” I said.
“I’m trying to show you the truth. The same truth you’ve dedicated your career to uncovering.” A soft laugh. “Think about it, Miss Rivera. When this is over — when the story is written and the consequences have fallen — whose version of events will you wish you’d believed?”
The line went dead.
I stood in the hallway of my building, heart pounding, mind racing through what had just happened. Victor Corsetti had tried to turn me against Sebastian using the exact arguments I’d been wrestling with myself. The doubts I’d carried since before I knew his name, given back to me dressed up as revelation.
The bastard was good. I’d give him that.
But he’d also made a mistake. He’d assumed my doubts about Sebastian were stronger than my commitment to the truth. That I’d abandon an investigation because someone whispered seductive possibilities in my ear.
He didn’t know me at all.
I grabbed a cab to Laurent Enterprises, my messenger bag heavy with evidence and my phone warm in my pocket. The city blurred past — glass towers and elevated trains and the perpetual gray of a Chicago winter that never quite committed to ending.
By the time I walked into Sebastian’s office, I’d made my decision.
“Victor Corsetti called me,” I said without preamble.
Sebastian looked up from his desk. Dark circles under his storm-gray eyes. He’d changed clothes since last night but everything about him read exhaustion — the tension in his shoulders, the way his hands gripped the pen like it was the one thing keeping him tethered to the ordinary business of the day.
“When?”
“Twenty minutes ago. He offered me a deal. Information that could destroy your empire in exchange for—” I trailed off. “Something. He wasn’t specific about what he wanted in return. He was specific about what he was offering.”
Sebastian’s jaw tightened. “What did you tell him?”
“That I wasn’t interested.”
“And are you?”
